Hilarious

Today on "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair began his comments by saying of the current unpleasantness, "It was a just and necessary war. It still is." He continued:

This is why my book is called A Long Short War. It didn't begin three years ago. It began at the very latest, I think, when Jimmy Carter allowed Saddam Hussein to invade Iran.

You see? The disaster in Iraq is Jimmy Carter's fault! But of course.

This reminds me of how at the Lyndon Johnson presidential museum in Austin, Texas, the Vietnam War is framed so that blame gets spread around freely. Look at this page of war milestones from the museum's Web site. What was the Vietnam War's very first milestone?

SEATO and Vietnam: The SEATO treaty, ratified eighty-two to one by the Senate in 1955, promised that, in case of aggression against its members as well as the "protocol states" (Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam), the U.S. would "act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes." Signed by Dwight D. Eisenhower, later administrations cited it as justification for America's involvement in South Vietnam.

You see? The catastrophe in Indochina was Eisenhower's fault, too! And then there were those 82 senators!

But why stop at Carter? Iraq was made greatly unstable when the Byzantine emporer Heraclius invaded in 627. Really, nothing was the same after that.